Tsunami hits Solomon Islands village

A 6- to 10-foot wall of water – a tsunami – crashed into at least one village of 3,600 people in the Solomon Islands. Initial reports said no one was seriously hurt.A series of major quakes have rocked the South Pacific region since Sunday, with three temblors striking Monday.

January 4, 2010

Wellington, New Zealand —
A tsunami unleashed by a major earthquake swept across the Solomon Islands on Monday with a 6 to 10-foot wall of water crashing into at least one village.Initial reports said no one was seriously hurt.

A series of major quakes have rocked the South Pacific region since Sunday, with three powerful temblors striking Monday, including a 7.2 magnitude tremor. The Solomon Island’s National Disaster Management Office said reports of the devastation were beginning to filter in late Monday.

The tremors were centered beneath the ocean floor near the town of Gizo, which was badly damaged in April 2007 when a 8.1-magnitude quake sent a tsunami crashing into the coast, killing more than 50 people.

“One report from police was that one village was hit by a 6 to 10 foot (2-3 meter) wall of sea water,” Yates said. “It was a total inundation police saw in a fly over.”Rendova is home to about 3,600 people.

Yates said in Baniata village on Rendova’s coast, 16 houses were destroyed and 32 damaged by the quake and the wave.

“It could be several hundred houses have been damaged ... but that is still not verified,” said Yates. “There are two to three villages where the situation could be much worse.”

Ten foreign tourists were staying on Tetepare Island, an uninhabited eco-tourism site, and the four Germans, four Britons and two New Zealanders were evacuated. Unconfirmed reports said two had been injured.

Yates said there were no other reports of injuries. “Whatever happened happened during the day and people were able to hike up the hills,” he said

Two helicopters and a police boat were carrying out damage assessments and a vessel carrying water, food and tarpaulins was dispatched from Honiara.

The magnitude 7.2 was centered 64 miles (103 kilometers) southeast of Gizo, and followed a magnitude 6.5 tremor less than two hours earlier centered 54 miles (90 kilometers) southeast of Gizo at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers). The latest aftershock was magnitude 6.1 and struck late Monday, 22 miles (36 kilometers) southeast of Gizo, U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement.

In late September 2009, a tsunami hit the Pacific Island nation of Samoa, killing more than 150 people. That tsunami brought attention to the effectiveness of early-warning systems. Education is as important as technology, seismologists and disaster management experts said.

The Solomon Islands lie on the “Ring of Fire” – an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim and where about 90 percent of the world’s quakes occur.